Representing Design Patterns as Design Components

Patterns should be incorporated in a software system in an explicit form so that they will be known to subsequent developers. In order to support pattern application, two basic requirements should be fulfilled: traceability and visibility. In our method, design patterns are represented as design components that may by placed in the library of pattern prototypes. From a prototype, an instance can be created when designing an actual application. In the paper, we describe prototype structure and the way of deriving pattern instances from the prototype.